Fragments F-H: One Day to First Impact
The "Last Pictures" from La Silla
These NTT images are the last that could be obtained
using this telescope before the first fragments start
to hit Jupiter. The comet is now so stretched that several
images are required to cover the full train and the leading
fragments are too close to the planet to be seen at all.
The proximity of the planet means that the images are
dominated by scattered light which is in places saturating
the CCD chip. As a result subtracting the background light
becomes extremely difficult and this explains the strange
features seen on these frames - they are not real!
This image was taken by Pierre Dubath (Lick Observatory,
USA and Geneva Observatory, Switzerland) using the New
Technology Telescope (NTT) with the RILD CCD system and
a red (R) filter. They were all taken close to
July 15.0, 1994. The background has been subtracted using
a low-pass filtering method.
This image shows fragments E,F,G and H, stretching from
upper left to lower right. F is rather faint and small,
G is double and just beneath a star. This is a 10 minute
exposure